Editorial Notebook;A Good Word for Dandyism

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It is well worth wading through seasonal slush to visit a show called "The Butterfly and the Bat" at the Frick Collection. It deftly celebrates a much-maligned and misunderstood attainment: dandyism. Here, spread through five galleries, are memorabilia associated with two elegant dandies, the American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler and the French poet and boulevardier Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac

The show is at the Frick, of all sedate places, because its collection includes Whistler's famous portrait "Arrangement in Black and Gold," depicting Montesquiou, dressed to the nines and languidly holding a walking stick. From its debut in 1892, the picture excited scandal, to the delight of Whistler, whose emblem was a butterfly, and the Count, whose insignia was a bat (and who also served as the model for Proust's scandalous Baron de Charlus in "Remembrance of Things Past").

But that is the whole point of dandyism -- to unsettle and provoke, using the weapons of wit and costume. This is what sets the dandy apart from the merely overdressed fop or cockscomb. In his own way (for dandyism is a male phenomenon), the dandy is a rebel armed with invincible self-assurance. He is the peacock who walks alone through a craning throng.

Such was certainly the case with George Bryan Brummel (1778-1840), the cynosure of Regency London, known to all the world as Beau. He made so vivid an impression that Lord Byron, not altogether in jest, listed him first among the three great men of his time, followed by Napoleon and the poet himself. For Brummel made his mark without advantaqes of birth, office or wealth. He was descended from the upper-servant class.

Ellen Moers, in her discerning 1960 study "The Dandy," notes that Brummel impressed not by flamboyance but by the rigid perfection of his spotless linen, simple ornaments, polished Hessian boots, a plain blue jacket and a cravat inimitably folded. It was his rule that a gentleman did not attract notice with vulgar display.

His bon mots were on everybody's lips. Asked if he ever tasted vegetables, Brummel replied, "Madame, I once ate a pea." His tongue led to his downfall. He is said to have infuriated his patron, the vain Prince Regent of England, by remarking loudly to a nearby courtier, "Who's your fat friend?" In 1816, he left England for permanent exile in Calais. Thereafter, Brummel haunted the society he abandoned. His imitators and admirers included the novelist Bulwer-Lytton, the young Disraeli and the French-born Count D'Orsay, prototype of The New Yorker's trademark dandy, Eustace Tilley.

Ms. Moers has it right. "Behind the dourness, the prudery, the heavy earnestness of the Victorian pose lay a tentative nostalgia for anti-bourgeois values. . . . The dandy figure remained somehow attractive, even to those outraged at the thought of squandering talent, energy and money on such achievements."

By century's end, this fascination led to a flowering of dandyism in London and Paris, with Whistler leading the way. A few steps behind was Oscar Wilde, who said truly that he put his genius into his life, and his talent into his art. Dandyism found its exemplar in the writer and caricaturist Max Beerbohm, who praised Brummel as a single-minded artist, who "looked life straight in the face out of the corner of his eyes."

Those flocking to the Frick show are also smiling, from the corners of their eyes. No doubt dandyism is frivolous. But it is a life-giving frivolity that warms and charms, a quality not to be scorned in this bleak century, or this relentless winter. KARL E. MEYER

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 16 of the National edition with the headline: Editorial Notebook;A Good Word for Dandyism. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe